John van Wyhe, Fellow, National University of Singapore; Researcher, History & philosophy of science, Cambridge University

William Whewell
was one of the leading figures of nineteenth-century science. Whewell's wide
range of activities and expertise make him particularly difficult to label.
He wrote authoritatively on architecture, mechanics, mineralogy, moral philosophy,
astronomy, political economy, and the philosophy of science. He he very often
called a polymath. One of his contemporiaries poked fun at Whewell, remarking:
"science is his forte, omniscience is his foible".

Whewell was a co-founder and president of the British Association
for the Advancement of Science, a fellow of the Royal Society, president
of the Geological Society, and for many years Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Whewell had a particular skill for devising new terms. He coined the words "anode,"
"cathode," and "ion" for Faraday and the word "scientist"
in 1833 (the term, however, did not come into general use until the very end
of the century). Whewell is perhaps most remembered today for his Philosophy
of the Inductive Sciences (1840). In addition to his influential pronouncements
on the proper way to do science, Whewell also attempted to classify the sciences
(see figure). Whewell wrote that the essence of induction was "the colligation
of facts by means of a concept". In other words a wide range of facts should
be brought together to support a conclusion. A theory could be considered confirmed
if many independent inductions from experience are unified and fit together
within the theory. Whewell was a Kantian rather than an empiricist like Herschel
or J.S. Mill. Whewell and Mill carried on a lively debate on these matters.

Whewell's
position as one of the highest elites of Victorian science can be gathered,
apart from everything else, from his authorship of one of the famous Bridgewater
Treatises: On Astronomy and General Physics.

Whewell also famously opposed the idea of evolution. First he published a
new book, Indications of the Creator, 1845, composed of extracts from
his earlier works to counteract the popular anonymous evolutionary work Vestiges
of the Natural History of Creation. Later Whewell
opposed Darwin's theories of evolution.